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OTTAWA — Toronto’s bus-borne replacement for the Scarborough RT is opening six months ahead of schedule.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference on Thursday, city and TTC officials said the Scarborough Busway — built along much of the right-of-way left by the now-defunct Line 3 — will open to the public on Sept. 30.

“For nearly four decades, (Line 3) got Scarborough residents where they needed to go,” Mayor Olivia Chow said at a press conference at Kennedy subway station in Scarborough.

TTC CEO Mandeep S. Lali said the busway will “provide a fast, reliable connection between Kennedy Station and Scarborough Centre Station, saving riders more than an hour a week on their commute.”

Line will use portions of old RT route

Testing on the new busway is expected to begin in early September.

Multiple bus routes will use the new Busway, and feature frequent express service to accommodate significant passenger demands left by the end of Line 3 service.

Beginning at Kennedy station, buses will stop at Tara and Moorgate Avenues between Midland Ave. and Kennedy Rd. south of the hydro corridor, Lawrence East station and Ellesmere station.

From there, buses will travel along the Ellesmere Rd. priority bus corridor to connect with Scarborough Town Centre.

End to end, the trip is expected to take around 15 minutes.

  • Old Scarborough RT just not up to winter weather
  • End of line for TTC's Scarborough RT

Scarborough RT was almost a hover-train

Service on Line 3 came to an abrupt and unceremonious end on July 24, 2023 with a disastrous derailment, sending numerous people to hospital.

That derailed train ended up being the last to run on the line, with TTC officials opting to shutter the service four months ahead of its planned decommissioning date.

Service on Line 3 began in March 1985, known then as the Scarborough RT.

While the RT line was originally intended to be a streetcar line — remnants of the original streetcar platforms were visible at Kennedy Station before Line 3 was decommissioned — pressure from Queen’s Park forced the TTC to instead use the line as a test bed for a new linear-induction powered transit concept being developed by a provincial crown corporation.

Dubbed the Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS) by Urban Transportation Development Corporation (UTDC,) initial designs for the train called for futuristic magnetically-levitated trains developed in cooperation with a firm based in West Germany, but funding cuts by the German government prompted a rail-based redesign.

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
X: @bryanpassifiume